Wednesday, November 17, 2010

blog #8


According to Mark Federman’s essay, “What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message?”, this phrase/idea, “the medium is the message” introduced by Marshall McLuhan, is the most popular and most frequently searched phrase on the internet. McLuhan says that “we tend to focus on the obvious” (Federman). He basically says that the reader or the watcher or the listener takes into their mind what they want to hear or see based on how they initially feel about the topic. Everyone is indeed entitled to their own opinions, which makes or breaks how they feel about what they are seeing or hearing. He says that the outcome of this is that we look back and see how these new things have created something else for us and he calls these “unintended consequences” (Federman).
Federman writes “many of the unanticipated consequences stem from the fact that there are conditions in our society and culture that we just do not take into consideration in our planning”, which leads to Stephen Kern’s essay, “Wireless World.” Kern writes about the Titanic and describes the Titanic hitting the iceberg scene. He goes onto describe how the wireless connection has opened up doors and “the ability to experience many distant events at the same time, mad possible by the wireless and dramatized by the sinking of the Titanic, was part of a major chance in the experience of the present” (Kern, 188). This is an example of the “unintended consequence”, as Federman refers to it as an “unanticipated consequence.” This incident of the Titanic opened up the doors of opportunity for the telephone to be invented, allowing two people in different places to talk to each other without having to go to each other. Going back to what Federman wrote, he also writes after, “these range from cultural or religious issues and historical precedents, through interplay with existing conditions, to the secondary or tertiary effects in a cascade of interactions.” The Titanic sinking made it into history making it a historical precedent that brought about this “unanticipated consequence.”
         McLuhan makes it clear that the audience views all types of media according to however they want to see it and make analyses and look deep into media according to their own beliefs and opinions. Also, how we are so focused on what is right in front of us that we do not see anything else that is happening around us such as the outcomes of different incidents, like the Titanic example Kern used, and how it helped develop better technology to advance our society.
Going back to the phrase “the medium is the message”, what McLuhan means by this is how the message is perceived is all up to how influential the medium is to a person, how he or she is views the medium as a whole and what sort of opinions, negative or positive, he or she has towards the medium.



Federman, Mark. "What is the Meaning of The Medium is the Message? ." utoronto. N.p., 10 Nov. 2010.Web. 10 Nov. 2010. <http://individual.utoronto.ca/markfederman/article_mediumisthemessage.htm> 

Kern, Stephen. "Wireless World." Communication in History: Technology, Culture, and Society. Author: David Crowley and Paul Heyer. 6th ed. Pearson, 2011. 187-190.

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

extended blog #2


Katherine T. Frith writes in her essay, “Undressing the Ad: Reading Culture in Advertising, that “most people think that there is too much advertising, that it makes us materialistic…exploits children, and generally corrupts society” and that while these things are not completely true, “there is some truth to them” (Frith, 1).
In the essay “Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture” by Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor, it describes advertising in a negative manner. Advertisements appear in places that are unexpected and creep up on society. The title of this essay basically describes how advertisements have “oozed into every ‘nook and cranny’ (410). The increase of advertisements reflects how much corporate power has rocketed. Advertisements had entered schools using soda, candy and other things to target children. This was a problem because it increased the rates of obesity in the U.S. “The average child was exposed to 40,000 TV ads annually” (412). Many countries have banned advertising to children under the age of 12 and before and after certain times of the day. Advertisements have become so prevalent that many call it “ad creep”. This is “the spread of ads throughout social space and cultural institutions” (412). These advertisements appear before movies, on buses, and on trains in cities forcing people to watch them subconsciously. Cities have actually bought merchandise from advertising to support these products for example, in New York, they allowed Snapple to be there drink and “some critics dubbed it the ‘Big Snapple’” rather than the “Big Apple” (413). More advertisement is causing this society to become more materialistic.
The advertisement that I have chosen is an advertisement selling brand-name cologne: Emporio Armani Diamonds For Men. In this advertisement, Josh Hartnett is surrounded by girls and other men who appear to be his bodyguards. Josh Hartnett looks as if he is content and satisfied because he put on this cologne and girls want him. Although not more than one girl, fully shown, is shown in the picture, you can see the other girls’ hands trying to touch him and the bodyguard looks as if he is trying to hold these girls back. This picture for this advertisement makes it seem like if a man were to buy this product, he would have girls wanting him left and right as Josh Hartnett does. The girl that is fully shown is staring at Josh Hartnett like he is a piece of meat she just wants to eat. This desire shown is appealing to other men because they might also want girls to feel this way about him. This picture the advertisers used for their product shows nothing of their product being used, which should be the ultimate goal. Instead they use someone famous with girls swarming him to sell their product. This advertisement is parallel to U.S. society’s cultural views: sex sells. While in other cultures this might not be true and the most appealing, it is in the U.S.
Advertising has had a large impact, both negative and positive, on the U.S. society: whether it was making the society more materialistic or advancing the country’s economy with the money made by advertising. In Frith’s essay, he analyzes advertisements and discusses the “surface meaning”, “the advertisers intended meaning”, and “the cultural or idealogical meaning.” In doing this, he has shown a way to explain and look at advertisements in depth.